


Sepulchre

by Dassandre



Series: Word of the Day Fics [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Memories, Silence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 12:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15119129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/Dassandre
Summary: If James had correctly understood what R once explained to him about a malfunctioning hard drive on a server, Q needed to defragment: reorganize and optimise the emotional and intellectual bits and bytes that were out of sequence so he could articulate what he was struggling with.Q had been silent for nearly three days.For Boffin ... who knows why ...





	Sepulchre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts).



> The second in my Word of the Day series.
> 
> This has not been betaed or Brit-picked. All errors are my own and have been fed and watered along with the rest of the prose.

#  **Sepulchre (noun):** a tomb, grave, or burial place.

 

“A clattering-rattling sound. A bony sound. Like the skeletons of long-dead men clawing their way out of a **sepulcher**.”

Dean Koontz, Phantoms, 1983

 

* * *

  


“I couldn’t save him, you see.”

James looked up from his book at the heretofore mute man sat in the overstuffed chair in front of the window:  he’d been there for hours gazing at the now dark London skyline, just as he had been yesterday. Q got like this on occasion.  Quiet. Remote. Not morose but … introspective. Reflective. 

Okay.  Yeah. Maybe morose.

James struggled with his own demons and had never been overly good at fighting them.  Before Q, he’d drink and fuck until the roar of their voices and the heat of their breath was overpowered by the fetid miasma of alcohol and sex, but for all his efforts, the voices never fully fell silent.  Since Q … well, he still drank and fucked -- Q -- but he talked, too, and of the two of them, James seemed to have an easier time finding the words. He was a work in progress in that regard, and things still largely went unsaid, but they seemed to understand each other nonetheless.

Q’s demons, however ...

The first ‘Silence’ -- as James now termed it -- after they’d moved in together couldn’t have come at a worse time and nearly proved disastrous.  James had only just returned from a mission that, despite all his efforts to find an alternative, had necessitated he seduce the mark’s husband to obtain the required intelligence.   Prior assurances that such seductions were part of the job and didn’t phase him in the least, aside, it had certainly seemed like Q felt he’d been betrayed. James’ misinterpretation of Q’s taciturnity and the boffin’s inability to rouse himself from his malaise nearly destroyed their relationship in its infancy.

_ It never occurred to me to warn you about it.  It’s only ever just been me,  _ Q apologised once he’d found his voice again, and he had been quick to explain what had happened along with what had been bothering him.  James now knew The Silence to be the physical manifestation of Q’s impossibly brilliant brain reaching its capacity. Not of computer code or of designs for the latest gadget out of R&D but of thought and emotion … of memory.   

Most of the time The Silence came on abruptly and left equally so.  Q compared it to a quick reset of his system. And while he truly  _ hated _ when Q likened himself to a computer -- for the man was the farthest thing from dispassionate, cold, and calculating even though his job required he be all those things and more -- James couldn’t deny that the metaphor was apt in this case, particularly when The Silence manifested slowly.

_ This _ Silence had been coming on for days now.  If James was to extend the metaphor he loathed, at first there appeared minor glitches in the system: the Quartermaster was a bit more short-tempered and less tolerant of mistakes by his minions in the Branch or of his agents in the field. At home, Q spoke but little, slept even less, and when not even their moggies, Banjo and Blossom, seemed to bring him comfort, James began to quietly lay in provisions at their flat and made covert arrangements with R to take over the branch for a few days.  

When Q shouted for five minutes at Tanner, of all people, over a minor error in a mission brief, James gave R the signal to submit Q’s request for temporary leave, bundled his suddenly silent partner into his new woollen overcoat, and got him out of MI6 before full cascade failure occurred in front of sum and sundry.   

A simple reset wasn’t going to fix this.  

If James had correctly understood what R once explained to him about a malfunctioning hard drive on a server, Q needed to defragment: reorganize and optimise the emotional and intellectual bits and bytes that were out of sequence so he could articulate what he was struggling with.  It would take time.

Q had been silent for nearly three days.

Until now.  

James closed his book and turned toward Q, propping his arm on the back of the sofa.  Once he roused from The Silence, Q didn’t stop speaking until he’d explained what had previously been inexplicable.

“Boothroyd, I mean,” Q clarified softly but articulately.  He hadn’t turned from the window and sat with his arms wrapped around his legs.  “I was trapped. I couldn’t reach him.” 

James started and looked at the date on his Omega.  Shite. Of course. 

The anniversary of Skyfall was just a month away, but it had been preceded by the Fall of Babylon-on-Thames: three years ago today.  Q had only ever spoken of it once and then in general, dismissive terms. The burn scars on his left shoulder and arm told a far more harrowing story than had the man whose body bore them. 

Christ.  Even the chair.  James hadn’t thought twice when Q pulled it to the window from their bedroom yesterday.  It was angled facing the direction of the finally demolished husk of Six’s former HQ. 

“We’d been in the fabrication shop on sub-level two most of the day.  Welding the arms of the new ... well, doesn’t really matter, I suppose.  That project’s long gone, too.” Q dropped his chin to the top of his knees.  “Felt it -- the trembling, I mean -- a few seconds before the explosion reached us.  I thought it was an earthquake. What an idiot I was.” Q’s chuckle was pained and full of self-recrimination.  “In the middle of bloody London, an earthquake!”

James swung his legs off the sofa and leaned toward Q, forearms balanced on his thighs.  There was much he wanted to say. Holding his tongue these last days as he watched the man he loved struggle so had cost James much, but his role was to listen.

“Geoff knew differently.   Recognised it. From the War, of course,” Q continued.  “Yanked me clear of the acetylene tank and got us behind a worktop just before the walls blew in.  Nearly 80 years old and moved like a cat, he did. We’d about made it out of the shop when the secondary explosion ripped the world apart.”

James knew Q’s declaration wasn’t all poetic hyperbole.  He’d seen the devastation first hand.

One of Silva’s goals had been to take out the Executive Offices, to kill M and Tanner along with the bulk of MI6’s hierarchy, but the investigation afterward revealed his primary target had actually been TSS.  Using design flaws in the building and sparking gas in the lines remotely, Silva had triggered a chain reaction that when it reached the levels that housed the technical divisions, ignited the flammable and other dangerous compounds routinely used there, and generated an explosion five times larger than anything Silva could have created with semtex alone.   

It had left a gaping hole straight through eight storeys of MI6. 

Skilled though he had proven to be, Mallory’s quick appointment as the head of the SIS in the aftermath of Skyfall had demonstrated how easily executives -- even one as singular as M -- can be replaced.  

Destroying the tools and technology agents used would have but temporarily challenged their ability to be successful in the field, but killing a host of the rare minds that designed those tools and that technology would have been devastating.  

As it stood, MI6 had come close to being permanently incapacitated as a result of the boffins they  _ had _ lost -- Boothroyd among them -- and most credited the survival of the man now sitting across the room from James as the primary reason Six hadn’t been. 

“He shoved me p-past the threshold,” Q rubbed at his eyebrow and tugged at his fringe, a tick that only ever manifested when Q was deeply conflicted, “just before it collapsed.  Geoff … he was behind me. Saw it happening. Had to have done. Pushed me through so I-”

Q’s hand fell to his left shoulder and the scarring that hid beneath the thin weight of his well-worn jumper.

“So you would  _ live _ ,” James finished for him.  He’d got off the sofa whilst Q was speaking and stood before him, one hip balanced on the window sill.  He didn’t block Q’s view across the city but purposefully became a part of it: Q’s present balancing with his past.  

Q looked up at James.  Behind his glasses Q’s eyes were red but not damp; his brow was furrowed and his mouth twisted with a pain he still struggled to articulate.  

He nodded once instead and covered his mouth with his hand until he finally found the words to continue.  

“When I woke up … everything was dark but for the flames.  Emergency generators had failed. I’d landed in this alcove, not much more than a recess in the corridor, but turns out it was the most structurally sound part of the whole bloody building.  I could hear screams and groans of pain from other people on the floor, but I couldn’t get to anyone. Too much debris. Too heavy to move. I was walled up like Fortunado in Montressor’s catacombs.”

Then he looked off into the middle distance, and James could see in Q’s eyes that he saw not their comfortable sitting room with its rows of bookcases and hand knit throws and bits and bobs of technology scattered about but rather a flaming, debris-filled corridor he hadn’t known he would ever escape.   

“It was so hot and hard to breathe, but down at the bottom,” Q gestured at a hole near the floor only he could see.  “So I got down. A bit more air, yeah? Just enough space to look about, and I reached out my hand … he was there. Geoff.”  Q’s hand grasped a long-absent Boothroyd’s. “He talked to me. Said the things British men find it impossible to say to anyone let alone each other …”  

A tight swallow, another nod, and tears that welled but would not fall.  “P-proud he was. Trusted I’d do right in his stead. I wish he hadn’t said that.  Too much pressure at times.” Q’s hand loosened its grip on Boothroyd’s, and two fingers sought for a pulse that had ceased to beat.  He slowly pulled his hand back and tucked both into the loose sleeves of his jumper before looking up at James. 

“Geoffrey died, but I was the one entombed,” Q said, finally reaching the conclusion he’d spent three days seeking. “Sometimes it feels like I’m still there.  Buried in a burning sepulchre with no way out.”

  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think. Comments are love and feed this author's weary soul.


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